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Merck To Halt Lobbying For Vaccine
theodp writes "Reacting to a furor from some parents, advocacy groups, and public health experts, Merck said yesterday that it would stop lobbying state legislatures to require the use of its new cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, which acts against strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus. The $400, 3-shot regimen was approved by the FDA in June. Later that month, a federal advisory panel recommended that females 11-26 years old be vaccinated. The governor of Texas has already signed an executive order making its use mandatory for schoolgirls."
Seriously, what goes through the minds of these people? That the risk of getting HPV and cervical cancer is currently stopping teenage girls from having sex? How stupidly selfish do you have to be to not want more women to be vaccinated against HPV?
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These companies shouldn't even be allowed to contribute $1. As a matter of fact, government figures shouldn't be allowed to receive any money from any businesses. The sole reason that a business would contribute money to a politician is to get some favors. That is the bottom line. This story stinks and stinks real bad.
gasmonso http://religousfreaks.com/I spend the latter half of my teen years living at a Christian Retreat center. From those years I've come to the conclusion that Christian's can tend to overreact. No matter how much family values you try to teach your children, the peer pressure will be there. If everyone one around these children is having sex with their boyfriends, there will be pressure put on them from their boyfriends to have sex. And if their parents ask them, most likely they'll just tell their parents their not having sex. I found it ludicrous to not want a vaccination because "it promotes having premarital sex". C'mon now. If you're gonna be against mandatory vaccinations make it because side effects or process that it is given or something logical and possibly detrimental.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
It's not a cervical cancer vaccine. It's an HPV vaccine. Notably, it protects men from contracting and spreading HPV -- so calling it a cancer vaccine is more than passively dishonest, it's actively evil if it fools men into thinking that the vaccine is just for women.
I'm all for vaccinating everyone with this. But the campaign to fool the public by calling it a cervical cancer vaccine deserved to fail. And shame on all the newspapers and news organizations that went along with it. (I'm talking about you, New York Times.)
It's always easy to say that a new product or technology is going to improve our lives. There will always be studies stating that the "insert new thing here" is safe and will fix what ails us. Science and medicine are not perfect. New developments frequently come about which contradict previous scientific dogma. It is quite possible that some lasting damage will be done to these girls that did not show up earlier. I'm not saying that we should listen to the religious right. But we shouldn't use a vaccine on millions of girls just to spite them.
It would be much better to allow parents to opt in. A parent can make the decision for their child, not the government. The vaccination cost can be paid for by the state or federal government. When a girl becomes 18, she can then decide to be vaccinated at that point. With fewer girls being vaccinated, it mitigates the consequences of unintended side effects.
I suspect the vaccine is a good idea (it's still pretty new and we've seen new drugs withdrawn), but the government has no business mandating it's use. States/schools require certain vaccines to prevent outbreaks of contagious illness in schools and this vaccine does not qualify under that criteria. This is "thinkofthechildren" nanny state BS.
That said, if I had a daughter in that age range I'd seriously consider getting her the vaccine because it has to be administered early to be effective. And I really don't think it needs to be discussed with the kids any more than a measles vaccine does - it's just another shot they'd be getting.
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First of all I have no "morality issue" with this vaccine. If I had a daughter, I'd give it to her in a heartbeat. I'd also teach her about abstinence (preferred) and condoms and how sex is way to spread certain diseases. No problem there.
But when the government requires it, and is heavily lobbied by a drug company, that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Shouldn't these decisions be left up to the parents and doctors?
Whatever the case, it doesn't keep me up at night. As long as the fundies don't OUTLAW vaccines like this, I'm cool.
Merck produces a vaccine. Merck tells the Government that this is a patented drug that other companies should not be allowed to produce because they thought of it first. Furthermore, they demand that every single female should be forced to buy and use their product at whatever price they set.
Which brings me to my point: FUCK OFF MERCK.
You jackasses think that you should have the exclusive right to manufacture a product and force it on everyone via bribed government officials? That is sick,immoral, and anti-capitalistic.
... because HPV vaccination prevents AIDS and pregnancy.
http://outcampaign.org/
It's interesting that this perfectly reasonable objection seems to only be used as a rationalization for other, borderline-bizarre, "moral" objections. I could almost get behind this one, but most of the people questioning the safety of the drug really aren't interested in its safety per se, and wouldn't ever be satisfied by any amount of evidence as to its efficacy, because they're just using it as a sham argument.
I'm not saying you are, but as I've been following the progress of this issue, it's seemed to progress something like this:
1) Religious-right insists that anything which might make sex 'safer' is a tool of Satan, and has no purpose besides corrupting their little darlings.
2) Basically everyone else raises eyebrows, questions their sanity.
3) Religious-right folks have a powwow, try to think up rational justification for #1. Failing that, they find a totally different, seemingly rational justification for their position, but which has nothing to do with their actual motives.
4) Everyone else spends a whole lot of time and effort responding to the seemingly rational objection from #3, but are just wasting their time, because the real objection is not rational or practical. It's entirely religious (and somewhat Freudian).
So, in short, you have a good point, but it's going to be an uphill battle to get anyone to take it seriously.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There are issues aside from Merck doing this and that--it's all the usual influence peddling which would be expected in the insipidly broken system that is US health care. Merck is not the target here. One target is the FDA that is utterly incompetent and immorally charged to make life or death decisions with approvals and expensive bureaucracies. Once the FDA required proof for efficacy (instead of just safety as they had been doing for 60 years prior) is probably the single most important milestone on the downward spiral.
Given the cost of drug development, I'm surprised it's only $400. Vaccines are a one-time profit for Merck until their patent runs out. Given the alternative costs of therapies (guaranteed revenue), there's a good chance Merck just might not be as evil as they are made to be. $400 doesn't get you much in the medical world these days--not even an hour with a specialist at my doctor's office. Again, this is symptomatic of a broken system where someone else always ends up paying the cost of medical treatment or you never knowing until the bill bites you. We should be so lucky that the established price is at the forefront of the discussion.
Besides, it works against a virus, a communicable disease that can be conceivably arrested and perhaps eradicated, for far less than the cost of the effective treatment for the cancer it causes. Treat it forever or squash it now. Shouldn't something this simple be prioritized? How is this different from everything else we get shots for if people who don't have health insurance can get it, and those that don't want it won't have it forced down their throat?
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
By mandating in Texas it allows low-income families to get the vaccine without insurance. And by mandating the vaccine it forces insurance companies to pay for it so your out of pocket cost is now lower.
And if someone doesn't want to get vaccinated they can opt out.
p.s. The large sum of money was $6,000 out of the $24 "million" of his campaign contributions. And there is bills in 20 other states which are going to require girls to get the vaccine. And if his brother worked for Merck why isn't is printed in all the news articles? That would be great at selling more papers.
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Enough of the 'stupid religious people preventing disease control!'. What about the civil safety rights? I highly object against mandatory vaccination. Vaccination has a lot of controversy to it, and risks that it carries. Autism, Immune Dysfunction, among other things, have been linked to vaccines and vaccine preservatives (Thimerosal). This is definetly an issue of civil rights. I believe I should have the right to choose whether or not I have to be vaccinated. From the information I've read, I believe the risks often outweigh the benefits in vaccination. Considering the track record of previous vaccines, and especially since the HPV vaccine is new, I will remain skeptical and outraged at the mandatory injections of them.r oversies
h tm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine#Vaccine_Cont
http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/
http://www.autismwebsite.com/ARI/vaccine/vaccine.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
Just wondering? How could it possibly be 100% effecting in preventing cervical cancer when only 3 or 4 strains of HPV are targeted by the vaccine? And around 20% of cervical cancers are unrelated to HPV exposure?
Do they sprinkle the vaccine with magic faerie dust?
It seems as though the real issue here is personal choice. The problem is that neither the state, nor parents, nor the person being vaccinated is the proper person to ask for their choice. The person that should be asked their choice is the person that is to be vaccinated, but 10 years in the future.
Lets vaccinate everybody...and then once its done, we will vaccinate them again, against the diseases that come forth from the previous vaccination (which of course wouldn't have happened otherwise).
You really seem to misunderstand vaccination, along with the people who modded you insightful. Vaccination works by introducing a biological compound (usually a dead virus) that is similar to a real virus. By exposing the immune system to this agent, the immune system is stimulated so that when you encounter a real virus, your immune system reacts very strongly and prevents the virus from causing disease. Vaccines work very, very well for many, many diseases that are otherwise difficult or impossible to treat (there is a reason smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the earth).
Vaccination only works when you want to stimulate the immune system to fight off a foreign invader (viral or bacterial). It doesn't work against anything else.
I mean the long-term effects. It is well known that any so-called cure of something like cancer or such a disease (or for that reason any unnatural medicine) has side-effects.
Many medications have side effects, true. But the benefits usually outweigh the side effects. Go talk to someone who survived smallpox without a vaccine. There aren't many of them. Ask them if they would rather have had a vaccine.
Unnatural medicine? WTF? Is there some magic "natural medicine" that doesn't have side effects? If you go into your common hippy, granola, organic remedy store, there are all sorts of natural products that have side effects. Some can even kill you in large doses. Just like prescription drugs.
For example, radiation to cure cancer actually increases the probability of some other cancers, introduces problems in progenies (or the possibility thereof).
You are correct, the radiation used to treat rapidly growing cancers, can increase the likelyhood of other cancers. But if your untreated rapidly growing cancer will likely kill you in 12 months, would you trade that risk for in increased likelyhood of other cancers in 20 years?
Incidentally, do you know what is the best way to survive cancer? Don't get cancer in the first place. So eat lots of fruits & vegetables, exercise, and don't smoke. And get this new vaccine if you're female.
The whole "force" thing is a red herring; the government isn't really forcing anyone to do anything. You can opt out of any of the vaccines, including the HPV one. So people who are hell-bent on not getting their kids vaccinated can still do so.
Really, the purpose of making the vaccine required, rather than optional, is to require the huge 'silent majority' of people who don't have a strong opinion either way, and will just do whatever is easiest and requires the least amount of effort from them, to get their kids vaccinated. Without a requirement to do so, they won't bother, regardless of the long-term benefits. They just want to get the kid off to school; they'll schedule a doctor's appointment and cough up the cash if that's what it takes, but otherwise they never will.
Basically, the purpose of the requirement is to make sure girls whose parents are too stupid, ignorant, or lazy to have an opinion either way, don't get punished later on. Parents with a strong opinion in favor of vaccination aren't really affected, because their daughters would have gotten it anyway, and parents who are strongly opposed can always opt out along with the Christian Scientists.
This isn't really a policy that's aimed at the extreme ends of the spectrum, it's aimed at the middle, but as usual it's really being argued on by people who really have the least at stake.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Abstinence is the only way to save both your soul and your life. "
And has no bearing on whether her _husband_ carries HPV from previous encounters.
DIAF, you nutjob.
--
BMO
Ok, I am a pathologist, which means I ACTUALLY SEE CERVICAL CANCERS and unlike you armchair epidemiologists know what we are dealing with here. Cervical cancer is rare these days, but the more pertinent issue is that THIS IS THE FIRST VACCINE AVAILABLE THAT CAN ACTUALLY PREVENT CANCER! Do you understand that, no? well argue your stupid little points about safety and how many it will protect. Do you want to actually improve the health of people? If yes, then you need to favor this vaccine, no matter what your primitive superstitions say. Or your evidence-lacking vaccine fears are.
I guess if you have never seen a pelvic exenteration specimen you may not feel as strongly as I might. Hell, I am putting people in my line of work OUT OF WORK, but it isn't about job security, it is about people's lives. Also, it is about the reduced cost to society in pap smears, colposcopy, and everything else involved in cervical cancer surveillance. I don't think any of you, especially the males understand the enormity of impact this vaccine could have. We are talking billions of dollars and hundreds of lives each year.
Get out of your armchair and learn something before proclaiming.
>HPV also affects men, who generally catch it from women.
Don't forget the above--it's a good one too.
If folks are going to vaccinate all their tender-yeared girls to save them from cancer, shouldn't they be making sure the carriers, you know, the penis-wielders, are also inoculated? A long-term study would be a beautiful thing to see before we started letting Merck test things on a bunch of prepubescent girls, eh? Or, you know, just go ahead, hope for the best.
They're well meaning, after all. Hoping for nothing but the best of health for all of us.
Before you dismiss his argument based on your personal belief in the "System", you should take the opportunity to see if his claim is valid. For example, you might read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controvers y
Mercury is present in most vaccine formulations, in at least "trace amounts". It seems that some people are able to process this without an issue, but there is suspicion that many of the vaccine-related issues that have been correlated to vaccinations may be a result of a lesser ability, or worse luck, in processing the mercury content. While this may end up being a red herring, considering that the FDA has recommended removing all but trace amounts of Thiomersal, I don't think we should ignore it.
It is certainly admirable to want to reduce the suffering of people through vaccination. At the same time, vaccinations should never be considered "safe". Just as with Tylenol, or Sudafed, the risks should always be conveyed to the potential recipient. They should be allowed, without fear of repercussion (some rumors floating about that public education will be denied for those who refuse it) to evaluate the risks and benefits and decide for themselves. Despite all of the drug company propaganda, you will be hard pressed to find someone who won't take a vaccine for a serious issue that they are at risk of injury from.
While you are at it, think about the fact that despite "8 1/2 years of research", no long term studies have been performed to rate the efficacy of this vaccine over time for the strains it is supposed to prevent. Most of the people arguing that the vaccine should be mandatory are also using straw-man arguments against "religious, anti-sex freaks". For them, it is a crusade against what they perceive to be ignorance. Maybe some people who object to the vaccine are ignorant. But blindly supporting it is just as ignorant, even if you can quote the drug company's research. Meanwhile, those of us who take a cautious route to medicating ourselves and our children will be railroaded for the sake of community immunity of a few strains of HPV, infection by which a very small percentage of people will develop cervical cancer. Very, very small.
Speaking of cautious, this is just another reason to look at increasing cleanliness in public restrooms. Not that any amount of cleanliness would convince me to sit down in one. Even if it is just a Gary Larson-esque "Didn't wash hands!" flashing light outside of the bathrooms (classic!).
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I work at a Telecom in a lowly sales desk position. Recently my telecome started offering porn on cell phones. We then got a slew of people calling in (who often didn't have service with us) complaining about this because some article in a right wing paper mentioned it. I'd bring up things like porn being available on our major competators TV service. The internet being over run with it. And the fact that you had to jump through so many hoops to get it that it's more secure then your TV service (a friend of my tried to get it on a lark. She was denied because she hadn't provided a ID with a birthday on her account and had no valid credit cards).
This siutation is similiar, the religious get their panties all in a knot over nothing and will often be hippocrites and fools about a subject. They simply borrow the opinion of those who evangelize to them. Often without knowing it makes appear foolish and act like hippocrites.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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But that is simply unrealistic. Many will have sex, whether you like it or not.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
I bet you went and stabbed yourself with a rusty nail right after you got your tetanus shot, didn't you?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'm curious about your use of the word "innocent". Are you trying to suggest that girls who have sex are somehow "guilty"? Or that because they had sex they somehow deserveto get cervical cancer?
You do understand that most people in the world "actually have sex". I don't think we really want to condemn them to getting cancer for doing something that we were all designed to do.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you only vaccinate half of the population, you are sure to never wipe out the virus. So there will always be demand for this $400 shot until the patent expires and Merck patents a vaccine that covers those 4 virusses and 4 new ones.
I wonder if this is what Merck intended when they were lobbying for it. It wouold be much more cost effective if a) the vaccine was sold at the true marginal cost and b) the gouvernment would vaccinate everybody under 40. The coverage woould be so much wider that those few percent religio-fanatics that object to it would not matter too much.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
None of your analogies hold up.
HPV is different than Polio and it's different than small pox. HPV is rarely deadly for women that have regular checkups. In fact, the majority of women (and probably men if they could be tested more easily) have HPV. It is rare for someone that gets checkups to die, and its actually rare for the disease not to go away on its own. That's why it's much more of a choice in this situation. Polio and small pox either killed or left their victims severely disfigured - HPV is not as cruel...to everyone. All vaccinations include some inherent risk and this one mainly affects those who will not be going to the doctor to get a Pap smear regularly. A perfectly reasonable option is to let people decide for themselves. Unfortunately, like I said, it's unclear who would decide if a young person wants it, because no one is in a really good position to do so. The only thing that I think is clear is that the vaccination should be made free to anyone that wants it.
There's nothing easy about never having sex, never being raped, and never getting married to a man who unwittingly picked up HPV. Nowhere did you profess to being an idiot, either. You didn't need to.
Get a FUCKING CLUE you goddamned prudish religious freaks.
Um, what was that line about physician heal thyself? Allow me to impart the clue. Here's what the flamewar that you decided to pile onto consisted of:
WebHostingGuy pointed out that the financial donations were quite small in the large scheme of things.
Dr. Spork claimed that the vaccine was likely to be a 100% cure for cervical cancer, which if you are a doctor, you know if false. There were some other statements about cancer being bad and so on.
Jhon disagreed with the 100% statement, pointing out that the vaccine only covers the dominant strains of HPV and noting that there are non-HPV related cervical cancers.
WebHostingGuy claimed that eliminating the Merck covered strains would be 100% effective.
Jhon once again noted that there are many strains of HPV, but concludes with, "You're statement that "only those few types of HPV cause cervical cancer" is untrue. There are many. It would, however, be true to say that most hpv-linked cancers are casued by 4 different strains of HPV."
AC ("I'm a pathologist!!1!") goes off on a straw man, claiming that because Jhon pointed out that the vaccine won't stop all cervical cancer that he obviously wants people to have cancer, and then proceeds to go with an specious ad homimem attack claiming that Jhon follows primitive superstitions.
You then add your "clue" by ranting about how unpleasant cancer is, concluding with your contribution to the specious religion attack. Thanks so much for adding your wisdom. Perhaps you should read for context first next time?
You do realize that, with your stats, you just backed his point?
I agree with your stats, but I don't see how it lends itself to backing this policy; in fact, I find your post stunningly stupid overall. Average means exactly that--average. There is a difference between average and absolute, which lends itself to why mandate and making it available are two totally different things the governor, yourself, and most posters don't seem to be considering.
If something is average, why are you MANDATING THAT ALL GIRLS be forced to have this shot at a certain age? We don't demand the pill be given to girls when they hit 14 just because they become sexually active. We don't demand that they get depro shots either. That's first their choice as a person, as a patient, and better, it's a choice that they make, right or wrong, based on their life's events.
A far smarter policy would make this shot available to girls, not make it a point of overall, absolute policy.
It is not up to the state to decide and demand, or blackmail and make contingent upon, someone's personal health decisions. Not to mention, this policy, made by big corporation lobbying, or male goverors, is just putting personal sexual choice and health decisions back 3 decades.
Not to mention going after female juveniles; imagine if the governor had come out to say that, "If you want to hold a job in this state and are female, you must be innoculated with Gardasil."
Would you care to explain why a girl who is 14yo, who has not had sex and has no intention of having sex in the present, should go on the pill? Makes no sense; she has no reason to be on it, there are risks to the pill.
Would you care to explain why a person who is 16yo, who has not had sex and has no intention of having sex, should get this vaccine? Makes no sense either.
There are risks involved with this vaccine. There are future vaccines also in the pipeline where no concurrent study has been done on efficacy crossing the 2 vaccines; the future one is scheduled to pass and protects against more than Gardasil. Are YOU going to be prepared to tell someone that, because the state mandated you have the vaccine, a better shot in the near future that came availability is less effective, just because you want to protect them now, when they have no intention of having sex in that meantime?
See this for what it is--a proposed MANDATE TO ALL GIRLS, worse, who want to be educated in the public system (thus you don't get educated if you don't get it, and you likely might not have options to get educated elsewhere being in the public system aka private school). It's sexist. It's discriminatory. It's an invasion of rights both to juveniles and to individuals. It's class discriminatory. And it's even anti-education (get this drug/vaccine, or we don't allow you access to this public service and if you disagree and cannot afford to send your child elsewhere than state public school, we will penalize you parents financially and with jail if you can't afford said mandated education for your kid).
Really, I don't like the way that Merck is pushing to get their product out the door.
I think such vaccinations should not be pushed upon the people, especially if only one company sells it. It would give them a monopoly on this vaccine, a government funded monopoly for that.
I think we should first test it out further before getting the whole population vaccined. Once it's a generic product, then we should maybe recommend it highly to everybody. I hate to have a government forced vaccination, kinda like Hitler had the Jews, gays and certain religious groups tagged.
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